Friday, July 29, 2016

European research and policy organizations have devoted a fair amount of attention to the rise of extremist movements and intolerance in European countries in the past ten years. Attention has been directed towards both aspects of the problem that have been mentioned in earlier posts -- rising public attitudes of intolerance, and the mobilization and spread of hate-based right-wing organizations. (The topic has also received a great deal of attention in the press -- for example, in the Guardian (link), the New York Times (link), and Spiegel (link).)

One useful report is Intolerance, Prejudice and Discrimination: A European Report (link), authored by Andreas Zick, Beate Kupper, and Andreas Hovermann (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2011). The study is based on survey research in eight countries (Germany, Britain, France, Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Poland, and Hungary). Particularly interesting are the results on anti-semitism, anti-muslimism, and homophobia (56 ff.). Here are the opening paragraphs of the authors' foreword:

Intolerance threatens the social cohesion of plural and democratic societies. It reflects the extent to which we respect or reject social, ethnic, cultural and religious minorities. It marks out those who are “strange”, “other” or “out- siders”, who are not equal, less worthy. The most visible expression of intolerance and discrimination is prejudice. Indicators of intolerance such as prejudice, anti-democratic attitudes and the prevalence of discrimination consequently represent sensitive measures of social cohesion.

Investigating intolerance, prejudice and discrimination is an important process of self-reflection for society and crucial to the protection of groups and minorities. We should also remember that intolerance towards one group is usually associated with negativity towards others. The European Union acknowledged this when it declared 1997 the European Year against Racism. In the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam the European Union called for joint efforts to combat prejudice and discrimination experienced by groups and individuals on the basis of their ethnic features, cultural background, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age or disability. (11)

And here are a few of their central findings, based on survey research in these eight countries:

Group-focused enmity is widespread in Europe. It is weakest in the Netherlands, and strongest in Poland and Hungary. With respect to anti-immigrant attitudes, anti-Muslim attitudes and racism there are only minor differences between the countries, while differences in the extent of anti-Semitism, sexism and homophobia are much more marked.

About half of all European respondents believe there are too many immi- grants in their country. Between 17 percent in the Netherlands and more than 70 percent in Poland believe that Jews seek to benefit from their forebears’ suffering during the Nazi era. About one third of respondents believe there is a natural hierarchy of ethnicity. Half or more condemn Islam as “a religion of intolerance”. A majority in Europe also subscribe to sexist attitudes rooted in traditional gender roles and demand that: “Women should take their role as wives and mothers more seriously.” With a figure of about one third, Dutch respondents are least likely to affirm sexist attitudes. The proportion opposing equal rights for homosexuals ranges between 17 percent in the Netherlands and 88 percent in Poland; they believe it is not good “to allow marriages between two men or two women”. (13)

These researchers find three underlying "ideological orientations" associated with these patterns of intolerance and discrimination: authoritarianism, "social dominance orientation", and the rejection of diversity. And the factors that work against intolerance include "trust in others, the ability to forge firm friendships, contact with immigrants, and above all a positive basic attitude towards diversity" (14).

The topic of the incidence of intolerance in European countries is also the subject of research in the Eurobarometer project. Here are two Eurobarometer reports from 2008 and 2012 that attempt to measure changes in levels of discrimination and prejudice (Discrimination in the European Union, 2008; link; 2012; link).

Also from the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung is the report Is Europe on the "Right" Path?: Right-wing extremism and right-wing populism in Europe (link). This report provides country studies of the radical right in Germany, France, Britain, Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Here is how Britta Schellenberg undertakes to synthesize these wide-ranging findings:

Taken as a whole, the contributions in the present volume clearly illustrate the common features and differences within the radical right in Europe. Analyses of the current phenomenon of the various radical-right movements and a differentiated analysis of their origins are fundamental for considering counter-strategies. Obviously, there is no single, generally valid strategy that guarantees an optimal way of combating the radical right. In fact, strategies can be successful only if they match up to the specific political and social context and if the maximum possible number of players from politics, the legal system, the media, educational institutions and civil society are agreed upon them.

However, we can identify general requirements for strategies against right-wing extremism and xenophobia that form a framework broad enough to allow a European perspective. For concrete work in a particular place, this framework must be filled out with individual measures and activities specific to the situation and location. But for now, we shall now proceed to take a bird’s eye view and answer the basic questions as to what preconditions have to be created for maximum success in combating radical-right-wing attacks, parties and attitudes. (309)

Each country study is detailed and interesting. The France study focuses on the Front National and Jean-Marie Le Pen's success (and later Marine Le Pen's success) since the 1984 European election in gaining visible support and electoral success with 10% to 15% of the vote (84). The Mouvement pour la France (MPF) and its leader Philippe de Villiers also receive attention in the report. And the resurgence of skinheads and direct action neo-fascists like the "violence-prone street brawlers of the Groupe Union Defense" are discussed (89-90).

The essay develops a handful of strategies for combatting right-wing movements:

A comprehensive approach: Identifying and naming problems and strategically combating the radical right

Political involvement: Confront, don’t cooperate

Determining the focus: Protection against discrimination, and diversity and equality

Allowing civil society to develop, and strengthening civic commitment

Education for democracy and human rights

The Heinrich Boll Stiftung report authored by sixteen representatives from EU countries, "How to Counter Right Wing Populism and Extremism in Europe", summarizes current progressive thinking about how best to resist the rise of right-wing extremism (link). This document was the result of a conference held in Brussels and Antwerp in October 2015. Here are some key findings and recommendations:

The EU is being degraded into an enforcer of austerity measures across the continent. It is essential to restore the idea of the EU as a regional network of states that stand together in solidarity in order to promote mutual wellbeing, good living standards, tolerant societies, and democratic values that are shared by all.

Furthermore it is vital to explain the local benefits of EU membership to ordinary people with a clear and understandable message.

There need to be more efficient and accessible training and exchange programmes in order to decrease the distance between EU institutions and citizens.

Diversity must be increased and a greater inclusiveness within EU institutions is required, with mechanisms to enable a much more accurate representation of the European population in EU institutions.

Progressives should be strident in defending greater global and European integration against the often empty criticisms of right-wing populists and extremists.

We recommend that different stakeholders collaborate with each other in a knowledge exchange in order to provide public officials with EU-wide training.

Establishing quotas for those who are elected as candidates, by increasing leadership in minority groups, and via private-public partnerships to help promote equality in business as well as the public sector.

Hate speech has to be monitored in the European Parliament by an independent body and the existing sanctions regarding hate speech need to be reviewed.

Social media should be used in this effort to confront the advocacy of hatred and that a dialogue should be promoted between internet providers and social media companies, examining among others the possibility of creating a new platform for non-governmental organizations and the civil society. (5-6)

Here is a summary table based on results from all eight countries ranking the relative weight of EU priorities for EU citizens. Solving the refugee crisis dwarfs concern about other issues, though unemployment comes in as a substantial second.

Given Brexit, it is interesting to see the relative levels of dissatisfaction with EU membership in other countries as well. An average of 34% of respondents found that "disadvantages exceed advantages" in EU membership for their country, with the Czech Republic at 44% on this question and Spain at only 22%.

These are interesting survey results describing the growth of right-wing extremism in Europe. But these studies are limited in their explanatory reach. They are largely descriptive; they give a basis for assessing the dimensions of the problem in terms of population attitudes and right-wing extremist organizations. But there is little by the way of sociological analysis of the mechanisms through which these extremist attitudes and processes of activism proliferate and grow. In an upcoming post I will review some recent work on the ethnography of right-wing movements that will allow a somewhat deeper understanding of the dynamics of these movements.

Sunday, July 24, 2016

Complex socio-technical systems fail; that is, accidents occur. And it is enormously important for engineers and policy makers to have a better way of thinking about accidents than is the current protocol following an air crash, a chemical plant fire, or the release of a contaminated drug. We need to understand better what the systems and organizational causes of an accident are; even more importantly, we need to have a basis for improving the safe functioning of complex socio-technical systems by identifying better processes and better warning indicators of impending failure.

A long-term leader in the field of systems-safety thinking is Nancy Leveson, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT and the author of Safeware: System Safety and Computers (1995) and Engineering a Safer World: Systems Thinking Applied to Safety (2012). Leveson has been a particular advocate for two insights: looking at safety as a systems characteristic, and looking for the organizational and social components of safety and accidents as well as the technical event histories that are more often the focus of accident analysis. Her approach to safety and accidents involves looking at a technology system in terms of the set of controls and constraints that have been designed into the process to prevent accidents. "Accidents are seen as resulting from inadequate control or enforcement of constraints on safety-related behavior at each level of the system development and system operations control structures." (25)

The abstract for her essay "A New Accident Model for Engineering Safety" (link) captures both points.

New technology is making fundamental changes in the etiology of accidents and is creating a need for changes in the explanatory mechanisms used. We need better and less subjective understanding of why accidents occur and how to prevent future ones. The most effective models will go beyond assigning blame and instead help engineers to learn as much as possible about all the factors involved, including those related to social and organizational structures. This paper presents a new accident model founded on basic systems theory concepts. The use of such a model provides a theoretical foundation for the introduction of unique new types of accident analysis, hazard analysis, accident prevention strategies including new approaches to designing for safety, risk assessment techniques, and approaches to designing performance monitoring and safety metrics.

The accident model she describes in this article and elsewhere is STAMP (Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes). Here is a short description of the approach.

In STAMP, systems are viewed as interrelated components that are kept in a state of dynamic equilibrium by feedback loops of information and control. A system in this conceptualization is not a static design—it is a dynamic process that is continually adapting to achieve its ends and to react to changes in itself and its environment. The original design must not only enforce appropriate constraints on behavior to ensure safe operation, but the system must continue to operate safely as changes occur. The process leading up to an accident (loss event) can be described in terms of an adaptive feedback function that fails to maintain safety as performance changes over time to meet a complex set of goals and values.... The basic concepts in STAMP are constraints, control loops and process models, and levels of control. (12)

The other point of emphasis in Leveson's treatment of safety is her consistent effort to include the social and organizational forms of control that are a part of the safe functioning of a complex technological system.

Event-based models are poor at representing systemic accident factors such as structural deficiencies in the organization, management deficiencies, and flaws in the safety culture of the company or industry. An accident model should encourage a broad view of accident mechanisms that expands the investigation from beyond the proximate events. (6)

She treats the organizational backdrop of the technology process in question as being a crucial component of the safe functioning of the process.

Social and organizational factors, such as structural deficiencies in the organization, flaws in the safety culture, and inadequate management decision making and control are directly represented in the model and treated as complex processes rather than simply modeling their reflection in an event chain. (26)

And she treats organizational features as another form of control system (along the lines of Jay Forrester's early definitions of systems in Industrial Dynamics.

Modeling complex organizations or industries using system theory involves dividing them into hierarchical levels with control processes operating at the interfaces between levels (Rasmussen, 1997). Figure 4 shows a generic socio-technical control model. Each system, of course, must be modeled to reflect its specific features, but all will have a structure that is a variant on this one. (17)

Here is figure 4:

The approach embodied in the STAMP framework is that safety is a systems effect, dynamically influenced by the control systems embodied in the total process in question.

In STAMP, systems are viewed as interrelated components that are kept in a state of dynamic equilibrium by feedback loops of information and control. A system in this conceptualization is not a static design—it is a dynamic process that is continually adapting to achieve its ends and to react to changes in itself and its environment. The original design must not only enforce appropriate constraints on behavior to ensure safe operation, but the system must continue to operate safely as changes occur. The process leading up to an accident (loss event) can be described in terms of an adaptive feedback function that fails to maintain safety as performance changes over time to meet a complex set of goals and values. (12)

And:

In systems theory, systems are viewed as hierarchical structures where each level imposes constraints on the activity of the level beneath it—that is, constraints or lack of constraints at a higher level allow or control lower-level behavior (Checkland, 1981). Control laws are constraints on the relationships between the values of system variables. Safety-related control laws or constraints therefore specify those relationships between system variables that constitute the nonhazardous system states, for example, the power must never be on when the access door is open. The control processes (including the physical design) that enforce these constraints will limit system behavior to safe changes and adaptations. (17)

Leveson's understanding of systems theory brings along with it a strong conception of "emergence". She argues that higher levels of systems possess properties that cannot be reduced to the properties of the components, and that safety is one such property:

In systems theory, complex systems are modeled as a hierarchy of levels of organization, each more complex than the one below, where a level is characterized by having emergent or irreducible properties. Hierarchy theory deals with the fundamental differences between one level of complexity and another. Its ultimate aim is to explain the relationships between different levels: what generates the levels, what separates them, and what links them. Emergent properties associated with a set of components at one level in a hierarchy are related to constraints upon the degree of freedom of those components. (11)

But her understanding of "irreducible" seems to be different from that commonly used in the philosophy of science. She does in fact believe that these higher-level properties can be explained by the system of properties at the lower levels -- for example, in this passage she asks "... what generates the levels" and how the emergent properties are "related to constraints" imposed on the lower levels. In other words, her position seems to be similar to that advanced by Dave Elder-Vass (link): emergent properties are properties at a higher level that are not possessed by the components, but which depend upon the interactions and composition of the lower-level components.

The domain of safety engineering and accident analysis seems like a particularly suitable place for Bayesian analysis. It seems unavoidable that accident analysis involves both frequency-based probabilities (e.g. the frequency of pump failure) and expert-based estimates of the likelihood of a particular kind of failure (e.g. the likelihood that a train operator will slacken attention to track warnings in response to company pressure on timetable). Bayesian techniques are suitable for the task of combining these various kinds of estimates of risk into a unified calculation.

The topic of safety and accidents is particularly relevant to Understanding Society because it expresses very clearly the causal complexity of the social world in which we live. And rather than simply ignoring that complexity, the systematic study of accidents gives us an avenue for arriving at better ways of representing, modeling, and intervening in parts of that complex world.

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

In a recent post I addressed the issue of the rise of mass intolerance and hate from the point of view of the public -- the processes through which sizable numbers of members of society come to be more intolerant in their attitudes and behaviors. This involves looking at the problem as being analogous to epidemiology -- the contagion through a population of the social psychology of hate and intolerance.

But this is only a part of the story. Right-wing political movements are fueled by ideologies and organizations, and when they come to power their success is at least partially attributable to these higher-level social factors. A movement can't succeed without gaining grassroots followers, to be sure. But it may be that the authoritarian and racist politics of a movement derive more from the higher-level factors of ideology and organization than the retail racism and social psychology of the populace.

This is the heart of the approach taken by Fritz Stern in The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology, where he gives a careful and detailed accounting of the philosophies and mental frameworks that underlay the progress of reactionary and racist parties in Germany (link). It is also the approach taken by Janek Wasserman in Black Vienna: The Radical Right in the Red City, 1918-1938, where the ideas of conservative religious dogmas, anti-semitism, and a hatred of modern secularism fueled the rise of Austrofascism. Wasserman gives little attention to the street-level politics of the struggles and mobilizations of left and right in Austria (unlike Arthur Koestler's gritty accounts of the mobilizations and street fighting of communists and fascists in Berlin; link).

If we look at the problem from this point of view, then the rise of right-wing extremist movements needs to be analyzed in terms of the ideologies that lead them and the organizations through which they attempt to bring about their political ends. In the United States the ideology of the right has a number of leading values: religious fundamentalism, nativism, anti-government and anti-tax rhetoric, free market fundamentalism, suspicion, homophobia, and cultural conservativism. And these threads have been woven together into powerful and motivating narratives of American history and the political choices the country faces for tens of millions of Americans.

In this light the writings of Richard Hofstadter, discussed in an earlier post, are quite important. Hofstadter traces the specifics of a fairly distinctive conservative ideology in the United States, a worldview of society and politics that has persisted in the organs of public expression -- newspapers, activists, professors, clergy -- over a very long time. And these tropes in turn find expression in the activism and mobilization of extremist groups like the armed groups who took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge last winter. These ideological strands become currents of extremist values around which individual entrepreneurs organize their appeals to potential followers. (Many of these themes are finding expression on the convention stage in Cleveland this week.)

It is a very interesting question to consider how mass consciousness in a population maintains a "folk" political philosophy over generations. How have American nativism and mistrust of government been sustained in the populace since 1900? Why does anti-semitism persist so strongly in some European countries where the Holocaust left almost no Jewish residents at all? What are the mechanisms of transmission and reproduction that make this possible? To what extent is this an organic process of popular transmission, and to what extent is it the result of ongoing ideological struggles? It is clear that ideologies have institutional embodiments. And it is an important task for political sociology to map out the ways these institutions work. Obviously newspapers, media, religious centers, and universities play key roles in the transmission of political frameworks to new generations of citizens; and the influence of family traditions and daily discussions of current events play a crucial role in the transmission of values and frameworks as well.

The organizations of the right include a range of configurations of groups in civil society -- right-wing political parties, religious organizations, anti-government groups, and cause-based organizations (anti-gay marriage, pro-gun groups, business advocacy groups, conservative student organizations). The hate groups tracked by the SPLC are the extreme fringe of this world. These kinds of organizations do their best to frame political choices and antagonisms around their core ideological tropes, and they do everything possible to stir up the emotions and angers of their followers and potential followers around these values.

Ideologies and organizations are clearly intertwined. Organizations have purposive agendas; and one important mechanism for furthering their agendas is to influence the content and nature of prominent expressions of social worldviews. So funneling cash into right-leaning think tanks, enhancing the visibility and credibility of their spokesmen, and turning up the volume on extreme right-wing media outlets are all understandable strategies of ideological conflict. (Naomi Oreskes' and Eric Conway's important book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming documents these strategies in the case of climate science; link.) But likewise, the currency of a bundle of ideological beliefs and values in a part of the population is a huge boost for the ability of an organization to finance itself, draw followers, and exercise influence.

So we can look at the rise of large social movements, including those based on hate and suspicion, from two complementary perspectives. We can consider the micro-level processes through which beliefs and activism spread through a population, and we can look at the higher-level factors of ideology and organization within which these political processes unfold. In reality, of course, the kinds of causation involved in both levels are always involved in political transformation, and it may not be productive to try to sort out which level has greater causal importance.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

The International Sociological Association hosted its third major forum in Vienna this month. (ISA forums are organized every four years; previous forums took place in Buenos Aires and Barcelona.) Nearly five thousand sociologists (and researchers in cognate disciplines) came together from countries all over the world, contributing to over 700 sessions in five days. So one might look at this as a great opportunity for distilling a map of the topics that are the most urgent for social researchers in many countries today. The program provides a first-hand exposure to a point Gabriel Abend makes about national differences in the practice of sociology (link); attendance at multiple sessions makes it apparent that there are substantial differences in topics, methods, and vocabularies across national and cultural research communities in sociology.

There are 56 research committees represented in the ISA, and most of the five-day program was put together by these research groups. An overall theme of global crisis emerges from the gestalt of panels and papers -- refugees, radicalization, international terrorism, racial conflict, and environmental collapse, along with the conviction that public sociology can help lead to a better world. Topics of aging, youth, the body, race, and protest are also prominent. There are relatively few quantitative research projects on display. (It would be interesting to compare the frequencies of papers using qualitative, comparative, and quantitative methods at this conference to that found at the ASA.)

It would be fascinating to see a network graph of citation clusters or keywords from the full list of papers to identify central topics. (The 829-page PDF book of abstracts might allow for some initial topic analysis along these lines.) What methods emerges as particularly compelling? What theoretical approaches and concepts are favored?

The demographics of attendance would also be very interesting to study. What countries are represented? What is the gender composition of the attendees and panelists? What about age and rank in the profession? The ISA has provided a country breakdown for previous forums; I assume it will do so after the close of this event as well. Perhaps most difficult to assess, why did these individuals choose to participate? Is there a sense of deep engagement in a set of intellectual issues in the disciplines? Or is the dominant motivation one of career competition and progress? It would have been very interesting if ISA had organized an "ethnographic corps" of volunteers who did short interviews with attendees to learn a little more about their interests and reasons for attending.

My non-scientific impression, based on assessing the audiences in several small sessions and a large common session, is that the attendance is skewed to a younger set of scholars, relative to attendance at the ASA. There are a good number of senior scholars (>60 years), but this segment seems to be less than 15% of a typical audience. In sessions I have attended the gender ratio is about 2:1 male:female and sometimes much more skewed. The age distribution of panel participants is more difficult to assess, but my impression is that panel participants tend to be more senior than the audiences. Gender representation among speakers appears to be substantially lower than the 33% female audience would suggest.

Studying this extensive conference in sociology seems like a good topic for investigation by researchers in the new sociology of ideas (link). I'm sure that Neil Gross, Michelle Lamont, or Andrew Abbott would have dozens of interesting questions to pose about this assemblage of the field of sociology in the process of renewing itself (as of course every discipline does on a continuing basis). The concept of "field" is particularly relevant here; many of the topic areas are actively engaged in contesting the various fields and institutions that constitute the sociology knowledge industry today. And of course the disastrous state of the academic marketplace in almost all of European universities is relevant; young scholars face almost impossible odds in seeking continuing faculty positions in their fields of expertise.

In my view this forum has accomplished a lot of what we would want from an academic convening. Important topics were discussed with seriousness, and new ideas were shared with a world-wide audience of mostly younger scholars. At a time when anti-intellectualism seems to be at a high, ISA makes a strong case for the vitality of sociology and the likelihood that research in the disciplines of the social sciences can actually make a difference in achieving a better future.

Sunday, July 10, 2016

A premise shared by all actor-centered versions of sociology is that individuals and their actions are the rock-bottom level of the social world. Every other social fact derives from facts at this level. Norbert Elias raises a strong and credible challenge to this ontological assumption in his work, offering a view of social action that makes "figurations" of actors just as real as individual actors themselves. By figuration he means something like an interlocking set of individuals whose actions are a fluid series of reactions to and expectations about others. Figurations include both conflict and cooperation. And he is insistent that figurations cannot be reduced to the sum of a collection of independent actors and their choices. "Imagine the interlocking of the plans and actions, not of two, but of two thousand or two million interdependent players. The ongoing process which one encounters in this case does not take place independently of individual people whose plans and actions keep it going. Yet it has a structure and demands an explanation sui generis. It cannot be explained in terms of the ‘ideas’ or the ‘actions’ of individual people" (52). So good sociology needs to pay attention to figurations, not just individuals and their mental states.

Elias's most vivid illustration of what he means by a figuration comes from his reflections on the game of soccer and the flow of action across two teams and twenty-two individual players over extended episodes of play. These arguments constitute the primary topic of volume 7 of his collected writings, Elias and Dunning, Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilising Process. (This is particularly relevant at a time when millions of people are viewing the Euro Cup.)

The observation of an ongoing game of football can be of considerable help as an introduction to the understanding of such terms as interlocking plans and actions. Each team may have planned its strategy in accordance with the knowledge of their own and their opponents’ skills and foibles. However, as the game proceeds, it often produces constellations which were not intended or foreseen by either side. In fact, the flowing pattern formed by players and ball in a football game can serve as a graphic illustration not only of the concept of ‘figurations’ but also of that of ‘social process’. The game-process is precisely that, a flowing figuration of human beings whose actions and experiences continuously interlock, a social process in miniature. One of the most instructive aspects of the fast-changing pattern of a football game is the fact that this pattern is formed by the moving players of both sides. If one concentrated one’s attention only on the activities of the players of one team and turned a blind eye to the activities of the other, one could not follow the game. The actions and experiences of the members of the team which one tried to observe in isolation and independently of the actions and perceptions of the other would remain incomprehensible. In an ongoing game, the two teams form with each other a single figuration. It requires a capacity for distancing oneself from the game to recognize that the actions of each side constantly interlock with those of their opponents and thus that the two opposing sides form a single figuration. So do antagonistic states. Social processes are often uncontrollable because they are fuelled by enmity. Partisanship for one side or another can easily blur that fact. (51-52; italics mine)

Here is a more theoretical formulation from Elias, from "Dynamics of sports groups" in the same volume.

Let us start with the concept of ‘figuration’. It has already been said that a game is the changing figuration of the players on the field. This means that the figuration is not only an aspect of the players. It is not as one sometimes seems to believe if one uses related expressions such as ‘social pattern’, ‘social group’, or ‘society’, something abstracted from individual people. Figurations are formed by individuals, as it were ‘body and soul’. If one watches the players standing and moving on the field in constant inter-dependence, one can actually see them forcing a continuously changing figuration. If groups or societies are large, one usually cannot see the figurations their individual members form with one another. Nevertheless, in these cases too people form figurations with each other — a city, a church, a political party, a state — which are no less real than the one formed by players on a football field, even though one cannot take them in at a glance.

To envisage groupings of people as figurations in this sense, with their dynamics, their problems of tension and of tension control and many others, even though one cannot see them here and now, requires a specific training. This is one of the tasks of figurational sociology, of which the present essay is an example. At present, a good deal of uncertainty still exists with regard to the nature of that phenomenon to which one refers as ‘society’. Sociological theories often appear to start from the assumption that ‘groups’ or ‘societies’, and ‘social phenomean’ in general, are something abstracted from individual people, or at least that they are not quite as ‘real’ as individuals, whatever that may mean. The game of football — as a small-scale model — can help to correct this view. It shows that figurations of individuals are neither more nor less real than the individuals who form them. Figurational sociology is based on observations such as this. In contrast to sociological theories which treat societies as if they were mere names, an ‘ideal type’, a sociologist’s construction, and which are in that sense representative of sociological nominalism, it represents a sociological realism. Individuals always come in figurations and figurations are always formed by individuals. (199)

This ontological position converges closely with the "relational" view of social action advocated by the new pragmatists as well as Chuck Tilly. The pragmatists' idea that individual actions derive from the flow of opportunities and reactions instigated by the movements of others is particularly relevant. But Elias's view also seems to have some resonance with the idea of methodological localism as well: "individuals in local social interactions are the molecule of the social world."

What seems correct here is an insight into the "descriptive ontology" of the social world. Elias credibly establishes the fact of entangled, flowing patterns of action by individuals during an episode, and makes it credible that these collective patterns don't derive fully in any direct way from the individual intentions of the participants. "Figurations are just as real as individuals." So the sociologist's ontology needs to include figurations. Moreover the insight seems to cast doubt as well on the analytical sociologists' strategy of "dissection". These points suggest that Elias provides a basis for a critique of ontological individualism. And Elias can be understood as calling for more realism in sociological description.

What this analysis does not provide is any hint about how to use this idea in constructing explanations of larger-scale social outcomes or patterns. Are we forced to stop with the discovery of a set of figurations in play in a given social occurrence? Are we unable to provide any underlying explanation of the emergence of the figuration itself? Answers to these questions are not clear in Elias's text. And yet this is after all the purpose of explanatory sociology.

It is also not completely convincing to me that the figurations described by Elias could not be derived through something like an agent-based simulation. The derivation of flocking and swarming behavior in fish and birds seems to be exactly this -- a generative account of the emergence of a collective phenomenon (figuration) from assumptions about the decision-making of the individuals. So it seems possible that we might look at Elias's position as seeing a challenge to actor-based sociology that now can be addressed rather than a refutation.

In this sense it appears that figurational sociology is in the same position as various versions of microsociology considered elsewhere (e.g. Goffman): it identifies a theoretical lacuna in rational choice theory and thin theories of the actor, but it does not provide recommendations for how to proceed with a more adequate explanatory theory.

(Recall the earlier discussion on non-generative social facts and ontological individualism; link. That post makes a related argument for the existence of social facts that cannot be derived from facts about the individual actors involved. In each case the problem derives from the highly path-dependent nature of social outcomes.)

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Many countries are facing a detestable resurgence of racism and ethnic hostility in the current political environment, catalyzed in complicated ways by the refugee crisis in Europe, the Brexit vote in the UK, and the rise of trumpism in the United States. Animosity against black and brown people, immigrants, and Muslims is rising in many countries, and hate crimes and racist acts against excluded groups are on the rise as well. For many observers these developments are as surprising and as worrisome as the rise of virulent nationalism and anti-semitism in Germany in the 1930s -- a new politics of cultural despair (link). We thought perhaps we had moved to a democratic consensus in advanced democracies, moving beyond hatred and nativism, and we plainly have not.

What are the social and psychological dynamics at work that have unleashed these dark forces within democracies? (Here is an earlier post on hate; link.) What roles are played in these processes by some of the likely influencers: broadcast and print media, social media, political entrepreneurs with a political interest in cultivating hate and divisiveness, social networks, civic and anti-civic organizations, slow economic growth and mobility for some groups, and the fear of Isis violence around the world?

Some of these possible factors are external environmental conditions -- terrorism, economic crisis -- that influence individual political dispositions. Others are structural features of the societies we live in -- freedom of association for hate groups, dense social networks of like-minded people, information diffusion systems like media and transportation. And yet others are features of political intentionality -- leaders who deliberately foster fear, hate, and suspicion for their own political purposes, organizations that mobilize their members around divisiveness and suspicion.

Underlying it all is a profound set of questions about identity and political psychology. What are some key features of individual psychology that play into the dynamics of division and hate within a modern society? Are there common human psychological dispositions that leave people vulnerable to the appeal of hate against other groups in society? Is there a profile of democratic resilience that makes some people more tolerant and positive about their fellow citizens? (This resilience seems to be one of the characteristics deliberately cultivated by architects of European identity; link.) And are there known mechanisms of persuasion and inculcation that play up hate and reduce the impulse to resilience and tolerance -- an effective fascist rhetoric?

One such mechanism of social division seems apparent in contemporary events -- lies and aspersions against one group or another by leaders of divisive organizations (IKIP, the Trump campaign). And this in turn seems to reveal a central factor in the dynamics of hate in a mass society: the relative balance of trust and suspicion found in individuals and groups. Trust encourages tolerance and mutual respect; suspicion and fear encourage retrenchment, opposition, and hate. So a leader or party interested in bringing about a politics of hate will find it useful to raise suspicion about the target group.

Another plausible mechanism is the idea that people's thoughts and behaviors are calibrated to "normal", and when public figures begin using more explicitly racist language, ordinary followers begin to drift in that direction as well. (It seems evident that conservatives' public denunciations of President Obama in disrespectful and racist terms since his election in 2008 have loosened a broader public willingness to engage in racist speech as well.) There may be a positive feedback loop in which small racisms breed large racisms.

A fairly compact narrative of the evolution of hate in a particular society might go along these lines, represented in the diagram above. Most individuals have a psychology that is capable of both tolerance and hate. This psychology can be activated in one direction or the other by intentional political actors. Large-scale shift of attitudes requires some external threat that can be exploited by the party of hate. Economic crisis and terrorism can play this role. Hateful messages can be constructed by leaders through a variety of avenues, including public media, covert organizations, and political parties. Skill at framing messages of division and suspicion has the potential of activating latent grievances into active grievances. A few provocative incidents have the potential to create a widening cycle of suspicion, mistrust, and hate.

It seems clear that these processes could be modeled using an agent-based model if we liked; they have much in common with the mechanisms of pandemic disease. The cognitive and emotional processes influencing social trust and social suspicion could be modeled fairly simply as well.

The diagram above offers a simple view of a possible causal structure of the emergence of hate in a population. The standing conditions change over time but influence the mindset and dispositions of individuals in the population in a period of time. Individuals are subject to mobilization appeals and messages from leaders and organizations, and they interact with each other. Depending on the contingent contest of messages in the middle of the diagram, a climate of either hate or harmony ensues.

The diagram also gives a basis for a theory of a "public health policies for inclusiveness" -- a set of interventions that could make the emergence of widespread hate less likely. Reduce the footprint of the organizations of hate and intolerance; build confidence across communities in the trustworthiness of each community; undermine and challenge the messages of exclusion and suspicion that are the nuts and bolts of racist mobilization; discredit the leaders of the divisive movement. In a democracy there are clear limits that restrict each of these strategies, but there are certainly legitimate ways of proceeding.

There is a surprising lack of attention to these kinds of social processes within sociology today. Michael Mann's work on murderous ethnic cleansing in The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing is relevant, but the core of Mann's theory doesn't fit very well the situations of Europe or North America today. Moreover, Mann doesn't have a lot to say about the spread of ethnic hostility -- the mechanics of ethnic mobilization -- in the cases he considers in detail. He believes that ethnic cleansing is a modern development, linked with emerging democracies. But he doesn't appear to be interested in the questions of political and cultural psychology -- the ways in which ordinary variations in personal attitudes and beliefs are sometimes transformed into rising levels of suspicion and animosity towards members of other groups in ambient society.

So it seems as though a contemporary sociology of hate, nativism, and nationalism remains to be written. And it is urgent that we turn to that task, given the assaults on liberal, inclusive cosmopolitan communities currently underway in Britain, Western Europe, India, and the United States.

In the end, Polanyi is asking us to accept that we live in complex societies, the essence of which is the interdependence of persons and institutions. No person or action or institution is autonomous; every institutional movement or seemingly personal action will have consequences, often unknown, for people close and far…. A new public philosophy must be build from this foundational commitment to the reality of a complex and interdependent society. (227)

To see the world as it is in reality, not as we might like it to be in the logic of economic thought, is for Polanyi the only way to fashion public and social policies on moral and ethical foundations. (228)

Block and Somers are insistent that "free market ideology" is very far from "realistic". The arrangements of a "free market" are by no means self-reinforcing; they require powerful institutions to stabilize them. And markets require powerful states -- governmental action -- to preserve their existential prerequisites. So free market ideology and economic liberalism are not realistic from a sociological point of view.

So what is the "reality of society", in Polanyi's meaning? For Block and Somers, Polanyi's realism is directly related to his distinction between formalism and substantivism. Formalists look at the social world as a pure market environment in which rational egoists seek to maximize utility, and neo-classical economics is the science of this realm. But Polanyi believes this is a fiction, and that real human beings are always embedded in concrete social, cultural, and ideational relations with each other. This is the "substantivist" view of the social world. When Polanyi refers to the "real" social world he is referring to this substantive, concrete set of relations. And it is the work of social scientists, historians, and ethnographers to map out the details of these relations in a particular social historical setting.

So the vision of the pure marketplace is a fantasy or a utopia, according to Polanyi. The real social world is constituted by normative and material relations between real human beings.

One feature of this substantive reality, in Polanyi's view, is recognition of the unavoidable interdependence of human beings in all social settings. Once again, reality is poised in contrast to fantasy -- now the fantasy of the wholly independent autonomous economic individual. Rather, real individuals are embedded in concrete social relations with each other that constrain and guide their actions.

So reality for Polanyi stands in direct opposition to the abstract social theory of economic liberalism, or what Block and Somers call "market fundamentalism".

Peggy Somers is an advocate of critical realism for sociology (link). Is Polanyi any kind of critical realist, on this interpretation of what he means by "real society"? There are certain affinities, to be sure. Like Bhaskar, he affirms that the social world possesses real structures and relations, and that these structures wield influence on individuals and outcomes. In Bhaskar's terms, they possess causal powers. And, like Bhaskar, he gives credence to some of Marx's basic social categories.

But there are contrasts as well. His theory is not at all philosophical or ontological -- in fact, Bhaskar might describe it as empiricist, given Polanyi's view that the real properties of the social world are amenable to direct empirical investigation. (That is my own view as well.) Perhaps the strongest affinity with critical realism is Polanyi's conviction that a realistic understanding of the social world brings with it a definite normative stance and program for progress -- realism and human emancipation.

Here is an important statement of Polanyi's views of social change:

Nowhere has liberal philosophy failed so conspicuously as in its understanding of the problem of change. Fired by an emotional faith in spontaneity, the common-sense attitude toward change was discarded in favor of a mystical readiness to accept the social consequences of economic improvement, whatever they might be. The elementary truths of political science and statecraft were first discredited then forgotten. It should need no elaboration that a process of undirected change, the pace of which is deemed too fast, should be slowed down, if possible, so as to safeguard the welfare of the community. Such household truths of traditional statesmanship, often merely reflecting the teachings of a social philosophy inherited from the ancients, were in the nineteenth century erased from the thoughts of the educated by the corrosive of a crude utilitarianism combined with an uncritical reliance on the alleged self-healing virtues of unconscious growth. (35)

This passage clearly advocates taking change in hand and shaping it to the needs of ordinary people, not simply accepting the fatalism of economic necessity. And this perhaps has relevance for today's hot debates over globalization, from Bernie to Donald to Brexit. Here is Polanyi's treatment of the enclosure acts:

Enclosures have appropriately been called a revolution of the rich against the poor. The lords and nobles were upsetting the social order, breaking down ancient law and custom, sometimes by means of violence, often by pressure and intimidation. They were literally robbing the poor of their share in the common, tearing down the houses which, by the hitherto unbreakable force of custom, the poor had long regarded as theirs and their heirs'. The fabric of society was being disrupted; desolate villages and the ruins of human dwellings testified to the fierceness with which the revolution raged, endangering the defences of the country, wasting its towns, decimating its population, turning its overburdened soil into dust, harassing its people and turning them from decent husbandmen into a mob of beggars and thieves. Though this happened only in patches, the black spots threatened to melt into a uniform catastrophe. The King and his Council, the Chancellors, and the Bishops were defending the welfare of the community and, indeed, the human and natural substance of society against this scourge. With hardly any intermittence, for a century and a half—from the 1490s, at the latest, to the 1640s they struggled against depopulation. Lord Protector Somerset lost his life at the hands of the counterrevolution which wiped the enclosure laws from the statute book and established the dictatorship of the grazier lords, after Kett's Rebellion was defeated with several thousand peasants slaughtered in the process. Somerset was accused, and not without truth, of having given encouragement to the rebellious peasants by his denunciation of enclosures. (37)

Polanyi's realism has substantial implications for social policy and reform. If interdependence and reciprocity are real and permanent features of the social world, if a pure self-regulating market society is a plain fiction, then some programs for social change make a lot more sense than others. Social democracy, in particular, appears to be an almost unavoidable choice. (Or rather, the old opposition of "socialism or barbarism" seems like an unavoidable historical necessity. This is the thrust of Polanyi's anti-fascism.

About Me

I am a philosopher of social science with a strong interest in Asia. I
have written books on social explanation, Marx, late imperial China,
the philosophy of history, and the ethics of economic development.
Topics having to do with racial justice in the United States have become
increasingly important to me in recent years. All these topics involve
the complexities of social life and social change. I have come to see
that understanding social processes is in many ways more difficult than
understanding the natural world. Take the traditional dichotomy between
structure and agency as an example. It turns out that social actions
and social structures are reciprocal and inseparable. As Marx believed,
“people make their own histories, but not in circumstances of their own
choosing.” So we cannot draw a sharp separation between social structure
and social agency. I think philosophers need to interact seriously and
extensively with working social researchers and theorists if they are to
be able to help achieve a better understanding the social world.

Open source philosophy

This site addresses a series of topics in the philosophy of social science. What is involved in "understanding society"? The blog is an experiment in thinking, one idea at a time. Look at it as "open-source philosophy" -- a web-based, dynamic monograph on the philosophy of social science and some foundational issues about the nature of the social world.

Recent publications

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Digital editions of Varieties of Social Explanation

Digital editions of Varieties of Social Explanation are now available on Kindle and iBooks for iPad. This edition contains the original text of the 1991 edition along with an extensive new introduction, "Philosophy and Social Knowledge."